1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an electronic record system provided with a pen type input device and an output device for displaying an electronic record. More specifically, the present invention relates to an electronic medical record system and a control program thereof wherein an input/output operation is improved. Although the following description will be mainly directed to an electronic medical record system, it is to be noted throughout the instant specification that the present invention is applicable to any other electric record system than the electronic medical record system.
2. Description of the Related Art
(1) Technical Background
Heretofore, in medical care sites, a medical record has been made up by writing a medical condition and progress of a patient in accordance with a time sequence.
For the medical record, a piece of paper is used as a recording medium, and hence, needless to say, “handwriting” is essential for making up the medical record. In this connection, such a conventional system may be referred to as a paper medical record system. If necessary, a figure or a graph, such as a standard figure of the heart or the lung is often pasted in relation to medical care. In addition, a printed matter that prints medical data may often be pasted on the medical record. Tugs may be applied or attached to written pieces of paper to be stored in individually colored files. This facilitates visual-based management. Furthermore, such medical records can be quickly seen or checked and therefore have a superior flexibility.
However, the paper medical record system has some problems. Specifically, a great amount of paper makes it difficult to ensure a storage space for the medical records.
Herein, it is to be noted that Medical Practitioners Law in Japan requires keeping the medical records for five years. However, five-years preservation of the medical records is not always long enough to ensure complete recovery in some cases. Therefore, such medical records should preferably not be discarded even after the five-years preservation. Further, even if some medical information should be modified from an original medical record, a modified record must be compulsorily left together with the original record prior to the modification, in order to avoid falsification the record before the modification. As a result, the amount of information to be preserved is apt to be increased.
As described above, in addition to the preservation duty of the medical records, there are “bulky” medical records concerned with patients who are hospitalized for long periods and/or who are subjected to long-term curing as regular outpatients. This results in inevitable lack of the storage space and further requires ensuring new storage space. Moreover, such a system increases a cost and further makes it difficult to find out a desired medical record.
Under the circumstances, with the recent development of the computerization technology, proposals have been made about various electronic medical record systems in which the contents of medical care can be stored. With this system, reference and modification of the medical records can be performed at any time.
This system is obtained by computerizing the conventional “paper” medical record system and has been started from the announcement of the Ministry of Health and Welfare in Japan. The announcement was issued to medical institutions across the country through prefectural and city governments in September 1999 and admitted electronic records as official medical records. Thereafter, the electronic medical record system has rapidly widespread in medical care sites at present.
Adopting the electronic records as described above makes it possible to unitarily preserve and manage the electronic records and to share them. Also, it is possible to perform keyword search from a great amount of data. Although the paper medical record system requires enormous cost and space for preserving information (paper medical record and the like) concerning medical care, the electronic medical record system can solve such problems. This is one of the favorable features of the electronic medical record system.
On the other hand, some novel problems take place in a conventional electronic medical record system. Specifically, the conventional electronic medical record system is constituted of a control/arithmetic device, an input device including a key board and a mouse, and an output device including a display device and a printer device. This system is disadvantageous in that the input operation of medical information is so difficult and, as a result, imposes a heavy load on a doctor so as to effectively operate the key board and the mouse.
Consequently, each doctor should devote himself/herself to the input operation in such a conventional electronic medical record system and may interrupt his/her thought about the medical care due to such an input operation. Also, seeing a doctor who desperately operates an input device, such as the key board, the mouse, makes a patient anxious about whether the patient has oneself carefully examined by the doctor.
In order to reduce a load imposed on each doctor at the time of inputting the medical information, consideration has been made about a “pen tablet” method. According to this method, an input operation can be performed in a manner similar to that performed on a paper media as an input device.
(2) Prior Art
As an example of the system using this pen tablet, disclosure is made in Japanese Unexamined Patent Publication No. 2000-325314 about an electronic record storage device and a method thereof.
This device essentially provides a medical record image or screen for displaying predetermined contents in a limited region. In this device, data input operation is performed by the use of a liquid crystal pen tablet by successively selecting a menu and buttons.
Specifically, an operator can input data by sequentially selecting items from the menu and buttons on the medical record image or screen when the items specify desired contents, looking at the medical record screen displayed on the output device. When comments or the like can not be entered by selecting items, they are inputted by using a key board. Such comments may be inputted by using the method disclosed in the Japanese Unexamined Patent Publication No. 2000-325314 (disclosed in FIG. 26). In this event, characters can be written in a predetermined frame or window with a pen and are converted into character data by a character recognition technique.
However, the above-mentioned system has the following problems.
The first problem is that the device essentially selects the menu and button and, therefore, each operator must comprehend a complicated specification of the menu and buttons, and thus, hospitals may be likely to hesitate to introduce the device.
The second problem is that, although the pen tablet is used in the system, an easy input operation like handwriting can not be accomplished because final input operation needs to manipulate the arranged menu and buttons. As a result, a very long time is wasted to be accustomed to manipulation.
The third problem is that, since most of the operations are performed by selecting the menu and buttons arranged on the screen, it is impossible to rapidly input what comes to mind. As a result, such an input operation may cause a doctor to lose his/her train of thought and erroneous diagnosis may be made by the doctor.
The fourth problem is that, since only predetermined items can be entered while any other items can not be inputted, restrictions are imposed on items to be entered.
The fifth problem is that, since a screen must be switched to another screen to make access to past data. It is impossible to display the past medical record simultaneously with the current medical record to which data is being inputted. No input operation can be performed, with the past medical record being displayed.
The sixth problem is that, since characters must be written in the predetermined frame or window in the case of the character recognition, it is impossible to perform the character recognition of handwritten characters written in an optional space or place.
The seventh problem is that, since the character recognition requires writing characters on a character input sheet, such handwritten characters themselves can not be confirmed later.